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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Will Climategate Overcome Media's Attempt to Sweep Story Under the Rug?

Cracks appear in armor keeping climate scandal from television news!

They say that if you didn't see it on television it didn't happen. For the overwhelming number of Americans who get little or no news from any other source that's definitely true. So, it shouldn't surprise us if most Americans don't know that the science upon which all global warming theory rests is riddled with fraud, incompetence and corruption.

Daily, the number of newspaper stories surrounding the climategate global warming scandal grows. And yet, television news has almost entirely ignored the problem. There have been more stories on the Washington, D.C. couple who crashed Obama's State Dinner last week than there have on a story which affects the lives of every single American.

CNN, which so few people watch, only mentioned it six days after the story broke so they could dismiss it. The only place you would hear much about it on television was Fox News. Nothing on ABC, NBC, CBS.

One chink in the armor came on the ABC News Sunday program "This Week" where the topic was discussed at length in the panel segment of the show (video and transcripts at Newsbusters). Keep in mind that this show typically gets less than 3 million viewers.

Despite all the efforts to sweep this story under the rug, coming at such an inconvenient time as Obama prepares to go to Copenhagen and work towards a costly and unnecessary climate treaty, I have a feeling that the major networks and lesser cable channels won't be able to ignore the story. As I mentioned earlier newspapers in this country and Britain are leading the way.

Here's a sample of the latest:

Finally, after years of denying nearly all requests the Warmers at the Climatic Research University East Anglia have agreed to allow access to all their data. But this might not be so useful to outside analysts as previously thought. Want to know why the Warmer scientists have been so reluctant to share their data? Simple, they discarded it after tweaking the data to reflect their biases:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

Why is this data dump such a big deal? Because Warmer scientists have already been caught in an error by using another of their flawed computer models to calculate temperatures in the Arctic which were totally made up and flat out WRONG, when compared to actual observations. And let's not forget when James Hansen, the Warmer in Chief at NASA claimed October 2008 was the hottest October on record until it was discovered he was using temperature records from September! Oops!

Now we are being told that this brilliant bunch in Britain have destroyed the records upon which all their subsequent data tweaking has taken place and there's no paper trail but we're supposed to believe their calculations are correct.... this time.... SURE!

More on that subject from Christopher Booker writing at The Telegraph, another newspaper in the United Kingdom:

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generationOur hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash.By Christopher BookerThe Telegraph28 Nov 2009

...But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

Stifling Scientific Dissent

The left's favorite talking point on global warming used to be: "no credible scientist" disputes the claim. And by "credible" they meant scientists who published peer reviewed articles on the subject. Another theme which runs through this entire scandal is how these Warmer scientists used their positions to stifle dissent from other scientists and block the publication of opposing views, corrupting the peer review process.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang.

One of the Warmer's most ardent supporters, The Guardian newspaper (U.K.) columnist George Monibot sadly reported how very direct the efforts by these Warmers have been in stopping dissenting views:

One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

...The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged....The response from the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science. The proof for this is circular. It's the best, we're told, because it's the most-published and most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature. The public has every reason to ask why they felt the need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim.

Meanwhile, expect to hear that an investigation will be announced in Britain on Monday. Look to see whether the chairman appointed to lead the effort is one of the Warmer's many friends or a truly independent figure able to get to the truth of the matter.

In the U.S. we'll be watching to see whether Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) (his enviro blog) is successful in getting an investigation started by the U.S. Senate committee overseeing global warming issues. Chairperson of Inhofe's committee is California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a devoted Warmer and the second stupidest woman in congress after Nancy Pelosi. So don't hold your breath. You might just build up too much CO2 in your lungs and it will kill a Polar Bear when you exhale!